About this Tube Chick

My name is Diane Stormer, and I created this site to share methods and resources that have been valuable to me as an adult who is tube fed.

I have a feeding tube due to bulbar palsy. I am not able to swallow safely.

My initial tube, which was placed September of 2011, was the basic long tube type of feeding tube. Just about 10 weeks later, in the beginning of December, this tube was switched out for a low profile “button” g-tube.

Discovering effective methods to manage the care of my tube, along with learning to make my own food for the tube instead of using “medical liquid meals” aka canned formula, has been a challenge; sometimes an interesting challenge, other times, an exercise in frustration.

As time passes I become more and more convinced that using real blended food meals, whether made at home, or purchased, is key to optimal physical health, as well as the profound psychological benefits of the comfort we associate with certain foods.

If I had to offer my three biggest, most important bits of advice, it would be for three different aspects of living well with a tube.

Keep your feeding tube from moving throughout the day (including keeping weight off of the stoma). This is because friction is the number one factor in the perpetuation of overgranulation tissue.

Do everything within your power to use real food instead of commercial formula. Read the label of any medical formula created for enteral feeding, and ask yourself why you’d want to put that in your body!

Attitude is the biggest factor in how satisfied we are with our lives. We may not be able to change our circumstances, but we can certainly work on our attitude. Lou Holtz (…or author C.S. Lewis, or somebody before me) said:

It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.

⊗⊕⊗

As a bit of trivia, completely unrelated to tube feeding, I wrote a book a while back, (target audience are middle school readers, or advanced elementary school). The children in the story are loosely based on my own kids when they were the same ages.

I also illustrated its cover. A photo of my middle son when he was about the same age, was what I used for reference when I painted it, and the forest depicted springs from my childhood memories of camping.

Although I retired as a flight attendant due to my disease, I still do work occasionally (very occasionally!) as an artist. Here is a portrait I did many years ago. Unfortunately, I’ve lost the photo I took of it to keep in portfolio, this shot is taken while it hung in a gallery display,and there was a plant on a stand under the painting .

A more recent example of my work is that of a painting done on my shed door. You can see this by reading a post from 2013 titled “My Storm Story” http://tubechic.com/2013/11/

My goal is to make this blog a resource for those who are looking for better, easier ways to live well with a feeding tube. Please take a moment to register as a user, so that you will be able to post comments. I welcome your feedback.